Athletics/Sports

Bike Lanes Could Bridge Cycling Gender Gap

By Melinda Tuhus

WeNews correspondent

Monday, March 19, 2012

U.S. women take only one-quarter of the country's bike trips and one reason for that, surveyed women say, is aversion to riding alongside motorists. Road danger is considered a big brake on women's enthusiasm for cycling.

(WOMENSENEWS)— More bike lanes would help.

That's one of the messages that female cyclists are amplifying ahead of the March 20 annual summit of the League of American Bicyclists in Washington, D.C., one of cycling's leading advocacy organizations.

"Because the national bike summit is such a gathering point for folks interested in bike advocacy, we thought this would be a perfect venue to elevate the discussion," says Carolyn Szczepanski, communications coordinator at the Alliance for Biking and Walking, based in Washington, D.C. "We'll be talking about next steps and best practices and how we move forward in creating an advocacy movement, infrastructure and policies that encourage more women to bike."

A six-member panel will discuss the issue, and organizers will be tweeting the event live and recording it for posting on the Women Cycling Project website.

"Ultimately," Szczepanski says, "we hope that this will be the launching pad to develop that site into a more comprehensive, dynamic resource for women."

Fear of having a bike stolen was in the middle at 33 percent. Fear of an attack by a stranger was near the bottom, at 13 percent.

When the women were asked what factors would cause them to increase their cycling, the top two answers were "more bike lanes" and "completely separated off-road cycling paths."

In many European countries, these amenities ­­-- some would say necessities -- are much more common, and so are female cyclists. In the United States women take just under a quarter of bike trips, according to 2009 data from the National Household Travel Survey, a program of the Federal Highway Administration, while in Europe women are more equal, reaching parity with men in Denmark and the Netherlands.

Kit Keller, executive director of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, based in Cedarburg,Wisc., says if U.S. cyclists had more navigable routes women would benefit disproportionately.

"We provide a range of options to get to the same destination by car," says Keller. "You can take an expressway if you feel comfortable driving in fast traffic, but if you have a lot of stops to make along the way you might take an arterial, or if it's a Sunday drive you might just go out on a country road. We really need to be doing that as well for cycling. This approach would encourage more women to cycle because it's probably not rocket science that women tend to be more risk-averse than most men."

Early Supporters

Since the bicycle was invented and adopted in the latter half of the 19th century, women's rights leaders have been cheering it on.

In 1896 women's suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony, said, "I think [the bicycle] has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can't get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."

But many aspects of the cycling world remain male dominions.

Just ask Tania Castillo, a 19-year-old who works as a mechanic at the West Town Bikes, a shop in inner-city Chicago. "You have to put up with a lot of sexism," she says, referring to customers who come into the shop and ask her to call someone to help fix their bikes. "'I tell them, 'I work here. Can I help you?'"

Castillo says she doesn't blame these customers, who are just not used to seeing a female mechanic. She adds that her male co-workers are very supportive and readily share their knowledge with her.

Castillo was recently in New York for the "Recycle a Bicycle Youth Bike Summit," which drew hundreds of youth and adult participants from around the country to share ideas for getting more young people riding safely and leading others in their communities to do the same.

Among the presenters were half a dozen members of the Girls' Bike Club in Chicago, which teaches girls basic bike repair and runs group rides.

Chicago is known as one of the best cycling cities in America, with many bike lanes striped on main streets, plus separated bike lanes in a few places, including along Lake Michigan.

Athletics/Sports

As a woman who is active almost every day I find this article intriguing. I think that it is often overlooked how much confidence young girls and women can gain from participating in sports and activities such as bicycling. Susan B. Anthony’s quote says it perfectly; “it gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance”. However, as the article mentions it is intimidating when men dominate the scene and are perceived as having more experience. It is no secret that men’s sports are “more competitive”, “more physical”, and “more interesting” than women’s, but the biggest problem comes when women start to believe those statements are true.

Especially with the effort to create healthy and active lives for America’s youth, women can capitalize on their natural role to fix the problem. Michelle Obama is an example of a woman who generated a role for herself and facilitated a movement where she could make a profound impact. Her goal is to make progress reversing the trend of childhood obesity. Tania Castillo mentioned in the article, also is an example of a woman who wants to make change and goes after it head on. She is the minority in the cycling world, but she continues to promote girls and women having an effective and fun way of participating alongside men. The Girls Bike club gives girls the chance to gain knowledge about their bikes, this way they do not have to ask anybody especially men to do it for them. Knowledge produces confidence and as more knowledge is gained girls will be less conscious of the things they cannot do and instead they can focus on the effort they put in enhancing their own strengths.

Changing the smaller discussion from a “male dominated” bike shop to an equal and safe space to express yourself physically will also assist in changing the perception of “male dominated” anything. Women have made tremendous strides in the past fifty years alone, but the work is not over. Working from the bottom up (such as a bike shop or bike club) can encourage women to participate in activities that they enjoy. Hopefully then, women can translate that confidence into participating in larger roles of change for women.